What is M3F Fest?
In 2004 a Phoenix general contractor threw a party for its employees on the grounds of WestWorld of Scottsdale, booked some bands, opened the gates to the public and promised that whatever was left over would go to charity. John Largay, president of Wespac Construction, called it the McDowell Mountain Music Festival after the range on WestWorld’s skyline. Twenty-three years later it is M3F Fest, a two-day festival in a 75-acre park in central Phoenix that still donates 100 percent of its proceeds, more than $6 million so far, to Arizona nonprofits.
The 2027 edition runs March 5–6 at Steele Indian School Park, on the former grounds of the Phoenix Indian School at Central Avenue and Indian School Road, with Joji, Fisher and Sammy Virji headlining a bill of fifty-odd acts that also includes Thundercat, Lola Young, Disco Lines, Flying Lotus and BLOND:ISH across three stages. Two-day general admission is $227 with fees. The 2026 festival, March 6–7, was topped by Peggy Gou and Mau P; 2025 brought LCD Soundsystem and Justice.
It is, as far as anyone can tell, the only festival of its size in North America run entirely as a nonprofit: Wespac pays its people to work the event, takes no fee, and the Largay family treats it as a civic project. Capacity is about 20,000 a day and the 2024 edition sold out. For a Scottsdale visitor it is the Valley’s best early-March weekend that is not a ballgame, 25 minutes away or one light-rail ride, and it pairs with the first week of spring training.
How to do it
Buy two-day, early. Prices step up in tiers through the winter, and the 2024 sellout was a warning. The VIP tier ($402 in 2027) buys shaded viewing decks, better bathrooms and a shorter bar line; the Club Pass ($1,002) is a hospitality lounge and not worth it unless someone else is paying. Single-day tickets have appeared closer to the date in past years but are not guaranteed.
Leave the car behind. Steele Indian School Park has little parking of its own and the festival’s own advice is to use the light rail or a rideshare. The Valley Metro train stops at Central/Indian School, on the park’s corner. From Scottsdale, drive the 202 or McClintock to the Dorsey/Apache park-and-ride in Tempe, or take the 51 to the Central and Camelback lot, and ride in; trains run late on Friday and Saturday nights. A rideshare works going in and is slow coming out, like every festival.
Friday is the quieter day. Gates open in the early afternoon and the main-stage lawn stays open until the dinner hour. The smaller stages run tighter, club-style sets, and the festival’s best discoveries have usually been there in the late afternoon before the headliners pull everyone to the main field.
Dress for a March night. Daytime in the 70s, 50s by the headliner, often windy. Bring a layer and a blanket. Water refills have been free since the Hance Park years, and the festival diverts more than 80 percent of its waste, so sort your trash.
Eat before or after. Food-truck lines at 8 p.m. are long. Roosevelt Row is a few rail stops south, and after-parties have landed at Crescent Ballroom and The Van Buren.
From WestWorld to Hance Park
The festival’s first six years, 2004 to 2009, were at WestWorld, the city’s equestrian and event grounds below the McDowells, where it was a camping festival with a jam-band bent: Ratdog, The Black Crowes, The John Butler Trio, The Flaming Lips. In 2010 Largay moved it to the Compound Grill, a former chain restaurant he had bought near Scottsdale Road and the Loop 101 and turned into a music venue. The Compound closed for economic reasons in April 2012, and WestWorld, according to Phoenix New Times, would not grant the liquor license the festival needed to return. So in March 2013 the McDowell Mountain Music Festival moved to Margaret T. Hance Park, the deck park over Interstate 10 downtown, with The Roots, The Shins and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. (The festival’s own history dates the Hance Park run from 2014; the contemporary coverage puts it a year earlier.)
Downtown changed it. Attendance grew to 16,000 to 18,000 over a weekend by 2015, the money raised passed $1 million, and by 2018 the McDowell Mountain name made no sense ten miles from the mountains. The staff had always called it M3F “because it was easier to spell,” Largay told the Arizona Republic, so M3F it became. Hance Park filled up, and in 2024, for the 20th festival, M3F moved three miles north to Steele Indian School Park, the first site in its history with room to grow.
What the money does
Wespac provides seed money when needed and the labor of its own staff, paid their salaries while they work the festival; about 150 volunteers, most of them Wespac people or their families, do the rest. Nothing comes back to the company. The early beneficiaries were three youth charities, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Ear Candy and UMOM. In 2023 the giving became the M3F Fund, a grant program any Arizona 501(c)(3) can apply to; it gave out $750,000 in 2024, including $140,000 to Phoenix Children’s music therapy program and $100,000 to Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona, and the cumulative total crossed $6 million in 2026.
The Scottsdale angle
Scottsdale lost this festival the way it has lost other things, over a liquor license and a venue decision, and Phoenix has been the beneficiary for thirteen years. The city’s own lawn festival, the Dreamy Draw Music Festival on the Civic Center each November, is the closest thing it has built since, and it is a for-profit production. For the rest of the year’s options see live music in Scottsdale. M3F is worth the drive because it is the rare festival whose ticket price buys something besides the show: a line item in a children’s hospital budget, and a reminder that a construction company’s picnic at WestWorld turned into the most generous event on the Valley calendar.